According to this scheme any interpretation should start with construal of the resources at your disposal. It is necessary to remark that National Parks Service specialists suppose knowledge to imply potential importance for visitors rather than factual or parameters -associated information of the objects. Every attendee wants to know his history and the truth is that an artifact can tell different stories (a story about a glorious victory will be enticing for others as a story of the greatest defeat) [11].
One may note that advanced western museums see this dialogical approach as a basic component of any exhibition realization. For instance, out of 10 criteria to assess effectiveness of a project offered by Nina Simon, executive director of Art &History Museum in McPherson centre in Santa-Cruz, California, three criteria, this way or another, are linked with attention to a visitor, his initial and final standpoints on visiting a museum:
- Relevance: how does it correlate with what people are worried about?
- Aesthetic criteria: is it beautiful?
- Technical: is it masterly mad?
- Is the project innovative?
- Interpretation: can people understand it?
- Educational effect: what can people learn from it?
- Participation: can people be involved in the project and contribute to it?
- Research: Does the project generate new research or insight?
- Ties between people, structures, and communities: does any unexpected communication effect appear?
- Motivation: does the project inspire people to act? [12]
Therefore, when we talk about relevant interpretation we mean such treatment of the past which coordinates with actual life of a museum visitor. But how can we create this relevance? Do we have any guidelines for such interpretation?
Definitely, there are such guidelines; they have been formulated by history, anthropology and cultural studies over the XX — XXI centuries.
Since the interpretation should result in socio-and man-based-proportionality of the past it is necessary to single out the directions which correlate with these objectives.
As for the first one, such scholars as F. Braudel, P. Stearns, E. Hobsbawm have enriched appreciation of history in its macro-social aspect.
Also there were studies into history of giant territorial and temporary spaces, mass social movements, and violence in history, social processes of historical transformations, "mental maps", economic cycles, economic growth rates, social stratification, modernization, symbolic power, conflicts and other problems of the late XX century.
And the problematics of these studies is mainly determined by relevant social problems. Thus, post socialism, globalism, neocolonialism, new world order, religious mobilization, mass culture, a new nature of migration and marginality posed new challenges for historians in analyzing phenomena and processes associated with these problems (democracy, empire, civilization, culture, identity, gender, mass notions)
[13].
Basically, it may be noted that research at this level is macro-context of human life designing. Modern social and individual reality looks for answers to such meta-questions as "Who and what are we and what do we do?", "How and Why have we come to be like these?" and, the most important one, "Can we change?" Owing to this approach, social, cultural and other dominants, matrices of our life are disclosed.
The results of these studies allow us to understand a system or random character of certain elements in a nation, culture, a person. They encourage nations, cities, and people to calm down, to stop tossing about, or, rather, to awake. They also help us realize and experience macro-identity and determinacy — national, political, social, cultural, geographical.
In this respect a tendency, when museums get involved in such large-scale conceptual stories concerning acute social issues as tolerance, migrants, genocide and aggression, historic bereavement, territories development, etc. seems quite comprehensible.
In our case evolution of travel and tourism in the context of modern Russian mass culture has become such a macro-level. Here, one can witness reversal of cultural practices, transformation of mass (quick) tourism and evolution of individual (deep) travel culture (review of research papers used). In this situation a museum possessing a historic proportion can "uncover", "develop" ongoing processes, demonstrate their social and cultural origin and consequences, and, most significantly, in the dialogue with modern travelers discuss possible scenarios and personal journeys strategies, self-identification in this space.
The second
man-proportional history enjoys even a greater historiography with contribution of such academic schools as historical anthropology, micro-history, history of mentality, history of everydayness, cultural studies, history of mass perceptions and "historic memory", verbal history which unite different but close in terms of our context studies:
- ways to perceive the world and arrange life in different times and cultures,
- motives of people who acted under conditions "read' by them in their own manner,
- everyday behavior,
- social practices, self-awareness, path in life of separate individuals and families with all their values and beliefs,
- modern history and culture (cinema, opera, photography, serials, historic memory, "non-convention history", fashion, clothes, embodiment)
- … and so on …
Surveys and inquiries that made it possible to create man-proportional history and allowing us to obtain insights not only of people living ages ago but also to learn a lot of ourselves.
This is a new way to understand the culture of the past as both social and personal tools: situations and solutions, causes of errors, mental framework, strategies, styles, behavior patterns, values and meanings.
In this context experience of the past can widen today’s experience and become applicable, usable and pragmatic for us.
In a museum based on this principle, artifacts of the past turn into triggers of self-reflection and man-associated dialogue, and an exposition becomes a mirror where a person can see himself and his time in a novel way.
In general, it can be said that culture of the past regarded in this way evolves into a reservoir of the content significant for modern life. The museum as a curator of unique heritage has all chances to be a factory of images, meanings, projects
[14].
In this sense it exhibits colossal competitiveness.
This approach applied to our research determined the study of travel as a certain culture — a set of notions, habits, meanings, mental framework, sensations, approaches and practices. To enter this level we have made use of existing papers in the fields of sociology, culturology, psychology, history of tourism, on the one hand, and turned to Yekaterinburg travelers, on the other, which gave us the opportunity to concentrate on most vital issues, to collect personal life stories.
All this allowed us to interpret a museum collection and history of travel not in the past but in the current period of time — as a material which is interesting for one’s touristic experience' juxtaposing and comprehending. The final exhibition had to let visitors understand themselves, realize what had been on their mind for a long time, learnt new ways to travel, and think of travel as the art. It meant that attendees could find a museum to be not only a site of knowledge but also a site of meaning, a place where travel could start.
Move on?!